Speed reductions in select residential neighbourhoods approved by Windsor City Council

Speed limit debate There was a major development regarding Windsor's vision zero policy. CTV Windsor’s Sanjay Maru has the story.

Windsor city councillors will now be able to select which residential neighbourhoods where they can reduce speed limits to 40 km/h, in combination with other safety measures, following a decision reached Monday regarding Windsor's Vision Zero policy.

Much of city council's Jan. 15 meeting centered around the final approval of Windsor's Vision Zero strategy which was approved by Environment, Transportation and Public Safety Standing Committee two months prior.

As part of the strategy, which aims to significantly reduce road injuries and deaths through the implementation of infrastructure changes and traffic safety measures, councillors were given the option of reducing the 50 km/h city-wide speed limit to 40 km/h or to implement speed reductions in select residential neighbourhoods.

Councillors voted in favour of the latter option, following an extensive presentation by Shawna Boakes, Windsor's executive director of operations.

"We have reviewed quite a few number of Vision Zero plans with other municipalities both in North America and Europe. All of them have noted they have been able to achieve lower speeds in combination of physical infrastructure changes and speed limit reductions," said Boakes.

She added, "So just putting a new sign out that says 'This road is 40 kilometres an hour' is not going to get us anywhere. We need to implement other things, whether they're speed humps, bump outs on certain roads or other traffic calming-related things."

There are 42 recommendations in the Vision Zero action plan, split in three categories of implementation: some driven by data collection and analysis, others which require a "complete streets policy," and some which could be implemented in a single step.

Boakes said its existing traffic management system is good but not being used to its full potential. That's because traffic safety data is scattered across different parts of the city's computer network and is not consolidated into one piece of software.

That’s why, according to Boakes, it can be difficult to quickly respond to request from residents for specific pieces of traffic data, such as where the most dangerous intersection is located or how many collisions have occurred in a given intersection.

"So it's going to take some time, transitioning all of our existing data into the software. We have multiple spreadsheets, pieces of paper, that kind of stuff. We have to take all of that and dump it into the software," said Boakes, who added the process could take between four and six months.

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said implementing a blanket speed reduction in the city is not the "be all, end all" in terms of getting drivers in the city to slow down.

"This is all about being solutions-oriented, not just spending half a million dollars, changing a bunch of signs and then telling the residents you did something when it won't really have an impact," said Dilkens.

He concluded, "So the process that was approved will give councillors the ability to talk about neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood solutions which are sensible, have an impact and allow things to move forward in a reasonable way."